TY - JOUR

T1 - Should Liberal Communities Respect Bad Believers?

T2 - On Empirical Disagreement over Climate Change and Public Reason

AU - Nielsen, Morten Ebbe Juul

PY - 2024

Y1 - 2024

N2 - Public reason liberalism strives to accommodate as broad an array of viewpoints as possible. Some people are selective science skeptics, meaning that they disagree with parts of mainstream science. Of special interest for this paper are climate deniers, who disagree with the mainstream consensus views of climate science. This creates a problem for public reason: on the one hand, public reason wants to avoid basing rules and policies on controversial principles, values, and so on. On the other hand, there are citizens whom we cannot outright call irrational who are skeptical about central tenets of climate science. This seems to imply that public reason cannot base policies on the robust findings of climate science because these findings are controversial among thecitizenry. But we have strong reasons to base our policies vis-à-vis climate change on the robust findings of climate science. How should we proceed?

AB - Public reason liberalism strives to accommodate as broad an array of viewpoints as possible. Some people are selective science skeptics, meaning that they disagree with parts of mainstream science. Of special interest for this paper are climate deniers, who disagree with the mainstream consensus views of climate science. This creates a problem for public reason: on the one hand, public reason wants to avoid basing rules and policies on controversial principles, values, and so on. On the other hand, there are citizens whom we cannot outright call irrational who are skeptical about central tenets of climate science. This seems to imply that public reason cannot base policies on the robust findings of climate science because these findings are controversial among thecitizenry. But we have strong reasons to base our policies vis-à-vis climate change on the robust findings of climate science. How should we proceed?

KW - Faculty of Humanities

KW - disagreement

KW - climate justice

KW - social epistemology

U2 - 10.1163/24689300-bja10050

DO - 10.1163/24689300-bja10050

M3 - Journal article

JO - Danish Yearbook of Philosophy

JF - Danish Yearbook of Philosophy

SN - 0070-2749

ER -